I'm a Strange Loop

I was thinking about consciousness for a while and read the book "I'm a Strange Loop". For those of you who haven't read it - it's a book by the author of GEB where he argues that consciousness is formed by a symbol in the brain that talks about it's self. But after reading the book I still don't see how that can be the explaination. I think the the biggest problem for me is that the foundation of his explanation rests on the idea of groups of neorons in the brain standing for different symbols. But don't you need consciousness to begin with in order for the symbols to stand for anything? How can a self pointing symbol feel anything?
Thanks.